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I'm planning English for my upcoming 9th grader for the fall. I was going to go with LLATL but have decided to go back to my original plan of doing Analytical Grammar (season 1 - 10 weeks), WWS, and the literature that goes with Notgrass Exploring America (at least some of it). I would like to add literature guides to a couple the books to flesh out the literature component a bit. How many should I do? I'm looking to have 1 English credit between the 10 weeks of AG, WWS (possibly not finishing it but doing it slowly throughout the year), and literature. Would two be enough? Which ones are good? 

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How in-depth and with how many books will totally depend on your student and your goals.
From your post, it looks like your English credit is weighted more towards Grammar and Writing (which is absolutely fine -- do what the student in front of you needs : ) ), with a lot of the Notgrass Lit. being non-fiction and geared for support of History rather than as a Lit. study. Also, in a previous post, you mentioned your student loves reading, but dislikes assigned reading. All that taken together would suggest transitioning gently/slowly into more formal study with some of the works, certainly not all. (Plus, it's hard to do literary analysis and formal literature study with non-fiction works, as they are not designed for that.)

What guides do we recommend.
I LOVE the Garlic Press Discovering Lit guides -- very meaty -- so I tend to go with those when I can, since they have so few guides. The free Glencoe guides are also useful, and some of the Progeny Press guides are good (others not so much -- depends on the guide). Another publisher I didn't link is Portals To Literature; these are also very meaty guides, but written for the classroom, and they take some work to adapt to homeschool/single student use.

All that said, my suggestion would be to shoot for digging deeper in literary analysis with The Scarlet Letter, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Giver. And if that's going smoothly, then also add Uncle Tom's Cabin. That would be one novel per quarter (9 weeks) for digging deeper. If you would like some background info and ideas of questions for expanding History studies on 2 of the autobiographies, then take a look at the Penguin guides. And if wanting to add to your Bible/devotional studies of In His Steps and Mama's Bank Account, you might try the Teachers Pay Teachers guides for those (no experience with that author or their guides).

BEST of luck! Warmly, Lori D.

The Scarlet Letter 
   - Progeny Press (Christian)
   - Glencoe Lit. Library (secular) -- free
   - Penguin teacher guide (secular) -- free

Uncle Tom's Cabin
   - Progeny Press (Christian)

Mark Twain Humorous Sketches and Stories

Mama's Bank Account
   - CNS guide - Teachers Pay Teachers (Christian)

To Kill a Mockingbird
   - Garlic Press Discovering Lit. guide (secular)
   - Progeny Press (Christian)
   - Glencoe Lit. Library guide (secular) -- free

The Giver
   - Garlic Press Discovering Lit. guide (secular)

 

Davy Crockett

Frederick Douglass
   - Penguin teacher guide (secular) -- free

Up From Slavery
   - Penguin teacher guide (secular) -- free

Co. Aytch
   - free lesson plan

In His Steps
   - CNS guide - Teachers Pay Teachers (Christian)

Miracle in the Hills

 

 

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Thank you! Those are the ones I was thinking of doing guides for. I’m also considering cutting a few of the Notgrass suggestions. There’s six on the list that I really want to do. I might swap out the others for poetry, something more modern, and maybe a play. We’d do guides for a few and then just read and discuss others. I’m still researching. I didn’t do literature in high school and I’m excited about doing it with DD. 

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